


Get In That Sinking Feeling

by RushingHeadlong



Category: Queen (Band), Smile (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Early Queen (Band), Heartbreak, M/M, Past Relationship(s), Unhealthy Relationships, set in late 1972
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-16 22:28:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28714287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RushingHeadlong/pseuds/RushingHeadlong
Summary: Brian wants to give a relationship one last try, but Tim is less eager to open himself to more heartbreak from his first love.
Relationships: Brian May & Tim Staffell, Brian May/Tim Staffell
Comments: 1
Kudos: 10





	Get In That Sinking Feeling

**Author's Note:**

> Title from “My Melancholy Blues”. This was another exercise in trying to keep a fic short instead of writing every possible detail. I hope it works and that the “backstory” here, as it were, is still easily followed.

Tim doesn’t know how they’ve ended up here again.

No, that’s not entirely true. He can trace the series of events from this evening well enough. It’s only the _why_ that eludes him.

Why Brian had shown up at the show at all, and why he had come backstage afterwards instead of leaving with the rest of the audience, disappearing into the London night and being long gone by the time Tim and the rest of Morgan finally stumbled out of The Marquee Club themselves.

Why Tim had taken one look at him in the crowd and had frozen under the spotlight, his voice stuck in his throat and the show only saved by the fact that their set list started off with a long enough musical intro that Tim had enough time to pull his eyes away from Brian’s and regain his senses before he needed to sing.

Why Brian was still so familiar to him, unmistakable even with his new clothes and hair grown longer and finally allowed to curl like it’s always wanted to do. Why Tim still feels the need to study these changes, cataloguing each of them until his mental picture of Brian is once again accurate and complete.

Why Tim asked Brian to come home with him with hardly a second of hesitation, without thinking of how tiny his bedsit is and how much space Brian would take up in it, always looming large in Tim’s life even after all this time. Why it’s still so easy to fall into Brian’s orbit again, nevermind that Tim told himself two years ago that that would be the last time that he’d put himself through this heartache again.

And yet here they are now, with Brian just as much a gentleman as ever as he politely looks around Tim’s too-small room, seemingly unaware of the way that the walls feel like they’re closing in on Tim the longer the silence stretches out between them.

“Why did you come to the show tonight?” Tim eventually asks.

The question comes out of the blue, but if Brian is caught off-guard by it he doesn’t show. He glances at Tim for a moment then slowly slides his gaze away, a familiar tell that Tim knows means that Brian is lying when he says, “I wanted to see your new band-”

“No,” Tim cuts in. “The _truth_ , Brian. I think you owe me that much.”

Brian doesn’t owe him anything, not really, not after all this time. But still it was _Brian_ who broke up with him, _Brian_ who waited two years before coming back to see him, _Brian_ who is standing in his room radiating guilt and remorse as he swallows roughly and flexes his fingers nervously and takes several long moments to speak again.

“I missed you,” he says at last. “And when I heard you were back in town, I knew I needed to see you again.”

It’s a selfish excuse, like it always is. Selfish without meaning to be, and hurtful only because Tim knows that it genuinely never would have occurred to Brian that maybe Tim didn’t want to see him again at all.

“You could have been seeing me this whole time, if you hadn’t broken up with me,” Tim says flatly.

“I know.” Brian flicks his eyes back over to meet Tim’s and he asks, “Would you believe me if I told you how much I regret doing that?”

Tim sighs at the predictability of Brian’s response. “Yes. But that doesn’t change the fact that you _always_ do this. You get spooked and you run away and you don’t ever care about what that does to me.”

“That’s not true!”

“Really, Brian?” Tim says. He starts ticking off points on his fingers. “You wanted to end things when you left for uni, even though I was starting at Ealing at the same time so we’d both be in London anyway. Then Roger found out that we were together and you actually broke up with me that time-”

“You were still twenty!” Brian tries to explain, though it’s weak and you both know it. “It wasn’t legal-”

“That hadn’t stopped you from fucking me before then, and it didn’t stop you from coming back when Rog made it clear that he didn’t care about us,” Tim snaps.

Brian flinches at his tone and Tim hates that the sight of the taller man shrinking into himself still makes Tim’s stomach twist with guilt.

Still, he continues talking, needing to lay this all out in front of Brian so maybe, _maybe_ , he’ll finally understand the pattern that Tim has known for years now. “I asked you move in with me after my 21st birthday and you got cold feet and only stuck around because I begged you to. And then when I left Smile you said it would be “too hard” to stay with me, so you broke up with me _again_ and that time I got the hint let you walk away. And now you’re here again and… What, I’m supposed to believe that it’ll be different this time?”

“It will be,” Brian says. “Tim, I fucked up before, I know that. I was stupid and scared, and I’m so fucking sorry for hurting you. But I’m not scared anymore and I’m done running away. If you don’t… If you don’t want to try again…” Brian lets out a shaky breath. “Well, I suppose I’ll have to accept that. But I knew I needed to at least apologize and see if there was any chance that we can still make this work.”

There’s a sincere promise in that speech, but promises aren’t enough. Promises can waver, when Brian walks back into his life and Tim finds himself yearning for everything that he hasn’t let himself dream about in years. Promises can break, when Brian finds himself facing a situation that he wasn’t prepared for, like has happened so many times in the past already.

Tim sighs again and says, “It’s not that simple, Brian.”

“It could be.”

“We’re going back to Rome soon, to record our second album,” Tim says bluntly, and Brian’s eyes widen in surprise. “The moment these shows are done I’m leaving the country again, and we can’t really try _anything_ if I’m not going to be around long enough to see if it’ll all work out.”

“You’re coming back though, aren’t you?” Brian asks, sounding almost desperate now.

“I don’t speak Italian, so it’d be a bit pointless for me to stay down there,” Tim says. “But don’t ask me _when_ I’ll be back in London, because I don’t know.”

Brian is quiet for a moment as he thinks this over, and Tim tries to brace himself for whatever inane suggestion Brian is going to make to try to salvage his plans here.

“I’ll wait for you, then,” Brian says at last, the words spoken with conviction, like Brian truly thinks he’s found the perfect solution to this situation.

Tim shakes his head. “I won’t ask you to do that.”

“You aren’t asking me for anything. I’m offering,” Brian says. “I’ll wait for you, and maybe… maybe whenever you do make it back to London, we can have this conversation again?”

Damn him. Damn him for _always_ finding a way under Tim’s skin and through his defenses, no matter how much Tim tells himself that this time he’ll stand his ground. He thought Brian would push to start something now anyway, or else offer something outlandish like going to Rome with him - both things that Tim could have, and was prepared to, refuse outright. Even if Brian had surprised him and backed off, Tim still would have been able to leave for Rome with a clear head and a healing heart.

But this, this promise to _wait_ , is unbearable. Tim won’t be able to move on if there’s the possibility of coming home to Brian again, not when he’s already spent the last two years unfairly comparing his partners to Brian and finding them lacking at every turn - but he won’t have any way of knowing if Brian is really waiting for him while he’s away or not.

It’s Schrödinger’s relationship, then. All the pitfalls of dating Brian, with none of the rewards.

Tim should still tell him to no. He should tell him to fuck off and to stop waltzing into his life and toying with his heart just to satisfy what _he_ wants… but Brian is looking at him with so much hope and longing in his eyes that Tim can feel his resolve waver, and finally crumble away entirely.

“Alright,” Tim says, and it’s nowhere near as reluctant as Tim wishes that it was. “I’ll promise you another conversation _after_ I finish recording the second Morgan album. But nothing more than that.”

“I’ll gladly take that. Thank you, Tim,” Brian says sincerely, and when he smiles at him Tim can feel his traitorous heart skip a beat at the sight.


End file.
